Andy from The Jerx (previously) continues to develop the theory of "audience-centered magic" with an excellent post on the deficiencies of snapping one's fingers to mark the moment at which some magic effect is meant to be happening.
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For decades, the Japanese magic trick company Tenyo has delighted amateur conjurers with their little magic gimmicks, which can be very clever indeed, but which are nearly guaranteed to fall flat when performed for friends and strangers.
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Andy from The Jerx (previously) shows how you can use Thomas Bloomberg's Konami Code effect (which allows the performer to force an observer to pick a certain square in a grid, despite a seeming free choice) to perform a baffling and delightful effect using a box of assorted chocolates this Valentine's Day.
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When Benjamin Franklin wanted someone to like him, he'd ask that person to do him a favor, because he noticed that people who'd done him a nice turn would rationalize this by assuming that they'd done so because they liked him, and so they'd continue to do him other favors in the future based on that affection.
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"Svengali pads," are magic props that, like a Svengali deck of cards, selectively shaves down alternating leaves so that a performer can seemingly riffle all the pages but only display every second page.
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Andy from The Jerx points out that the traditional conjurer's technique of tapping once, twice, thrice-and-VANISH is a fundamentally unsound way to do a vanish, because you're showing the audience what the tap looks like when you're doing doing the move, and no matter how much you practice that move, you'll do something a little different that third time.
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If you're like me, you've learned a few "everyday magic" tricks that you can do with things normal humans carry around in their pockets, and if you're like me, you've discovered that it's hard to casually do an awesome, perfectly practiced trick without being kind of socially awkward and dorky.
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